Abolish the Electoral College and Guarantee Equal Vote for All Americans

Our country, United States of America, was founded in the fundamental ideal enshrined in the Declaration of Independence: “Every Man Created Equal” with unalienable Rights for Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

To achieve this ideal, unprecedented at the time, our founding father established the core principle of constitutional democracy, declared in the Preamble to the Constitution: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

President Lincoln later reaffirmed this core democratic principle in his Gettysburg address, “government of the people, by the people, for the people”.

However, miscarriage of democracy, i.e. the will of a clear majority voters being overturn, has taken place twice in five presidential elections since 2000. In another word, in our country, the most powerful democracy in the world, there has been as high as 40% of chances in the 21st century that the loser of popular votes won the presidency, the most powerful office in the world.

Such undemocratic and outrageous injustice has been the direct result of the Electoral College system. The Right to Vote is the quintessence of being a free person with unalienable rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. However, under the Electoral College system, each vote is NOT counted equally from one state to the next.

According to the latest Census Data 2013, Wyoming has the least population of 582,658 with 3 electoral votes allocated, while New York, our home state, has a population of 19,651,127 with 29 electoral votes allocated. This means, it takes Wyoming only 194,219 persons to have one electoral vote, whilst it takes New York 677,625 persons to have one electoral vote. In another word, being a person in New York is worth only 28.7% of a person in Wyoming in terms of the electoral vote allocated. Such inequality gets worse for residents in the top two states, 27.9% for both California and Texas.

The Electoral College originated from the infamous “three-fifths” compromise within the 1787 Constitution which counted the population of slaves as three-fifths when appointing representatives and electors while granting no right to vote. If we rank all fifty states and the District of Columbia by population, then a resident of the top 44 states (98% of national population) would be worth less than 60% of a resident in Wyoming. In another word, in today’s America, a huge majority 98% of population are counted even less than the slaves in 1787, 230 years ago!

Therefore, the Electoral College is not only in gross contradiction of our country’s founding ideal of “all men created equal”, but also in stark violation of the Equal Protection clause in the 14th Amendment that essentially guarantees the basic democratic principle of “One Person One Vote, and Every Vote Counted Equally.”

From Mayors to House Representatives, from Senators to Governors, all these offices are elected by direct popular votes which reflects the democratic principle and basic fairness of “one person one vote, every vote equal”. The presidency is responsible for and accountable to all people in this country, rather than the states or electors. Hence, the Electoral College not only distorts the will of people, but also violates the accountability to constituents.

At the beginning of our country, only white male owners of property had the right to vote, slaves were counted only three-fifths of a person, women could not vote, young people were drafted to fight for the country but could not vote, and after the Civil War the Jim Crow laws deliberately discriminated against minority people and deprived their right to vote. It took courage and action to overcome all of these injustices.

Therefore, on December 14th, 2016, we filed a lawsuit at the U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, against the Congress aiming to (1) convince the Court that the Electoral College is not only un-American but also unconstitutional, and (2) compel the Congress to enact new laws for presidential election under the principle of "one person one vote, every vote is equal" according to the 14th Amendment.

Please help spread the word, and join this fight for our country’s founding ideal, core democratic principle, basic fairness and social justice to repeal the Electoral College, and achieve this fundamental right, “Equal Vote” for all Americans regardless of state of residency.